Using Poetry to Grasp Your Body

The poet Natalie Diaz has described her struggles being in fully in her body. The idenitites, systematic oppresions, and harships of everyone can have effects on your connection with your body as Diaz shares. Diaz attempts to grasp and feel her body through poetry yes, but more specifically language. In the poem My Brother at 3 A.M, Diaz’s desperate attempt to stay concious is a prime example of how important feeling the body is for this poet.

One of the biggest things I noticed first was the repetition. The first, second, and third stanzas are painting the same picture of the mother opening the door, the father asleep (a quiet house), and the dark night at 3 A.M. Diaz also repeats “he looked over his shoulder” twice (lines 8 and 11) and “He wants to kills me” (lines 4 and 7). This repition goes on throughout the poem, with the scene being painted for us over and over again. The sensation of desperateness, a desperateness to stay aware, to capture every detail, is intensified by this repetiton and can be tied back to the need to feel ones body.

The desperate tone provided by the repeition is aided by the strong imagery in the poem. Line 14, “The sky wasn’t black or blue but the green of a dying night” or Line 20, “His lips flickered with sores”. This imagery does not call for a pretty scene. There is a man who is lost, his body worn out, and a night equally defeated all the while a mother is making sense of her sons ecounter with this devil. In an interview Diaz states “something that has a possibility to be extremely uncomfortable, but also has the possibility to end in joy in some way.” These aspects of the poem are surely uncomfortable, but what is the joy that one could gain?

Perhaps the joy felt as she sees her brother regain sanity, as the sores on his lips go away, as he sits down with them for dinner once again and they know he is safe. But Diaz embraces the importance of these uncomfortable and sad moments in her life, how they shape her identity, how she fought the stay concious through it all and finds painting this dark night as valuable as painting a a bright sky. While many marginalized communites often carry the shame and pain of addiction and poverty, Diaz uses language to take back the strength these moments may have taken from her. In this poem, Diaz lets go of pain and shame and exchanges it for remberance, acceptance, and moving forward.

Darah Carrillo Vargas

God’s love can only fit One Soldier

By Mitaya La Pierre

George Herbert, a devote christian, wrote the poems “The Alter”, and “Easter Wings”; imagery induced stanzas that requited his love for Christ and the cross. A debate can be made that his work “Easter Wings” defines this love more visually and intensely, then does “The Alter” counter part. I, however, do not agree with this position; I personally believe that The Alter, with it’s imagery and theme, provided a more direct christian experience then Easter Wings ever could.

To begin, in the first 2 lines there is immediate description of what this poem is going to be about;

“A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,

Made of a heart, and cemented with tears”

Here the speaker is describing the ways of the altar, its creation founded upon heart; emotion. This speaker is a not only a servent to the altar, but an ardent one at that. So devoted to serving the lord, the speaker too in a way is like this alter. A ‘broken’ alter, made of ‘heart’, cemented with ‘tears’; a simile of his poetic devotion to our Lord and saviour. This is not where words of the ‘heart’ stop though. After line 4, the poem itself becomes narrower, like a pillar, and within all of those lines it speaks directly of the heart. (5-13)

“A HEART alone 

is such a stone,

As nothing but

Thy power doth cut.

Wherever each part

Of my hard heart

Meets in this frame,

To praise thy Name:”

As I discussed previously of him being like an alter, his ‘heart’ is like the stone of which the meat of the alter stands. He is personifying this way of worship. This alter is him, and he is the alter, for which only being with God and servicing him brings light into his ‘stone’ like heart. The same way that a statue becomes an alter the moment you start praying at it; is the same way his heart is suspended from gloom to praise the one and only.

In Easter Wings, I obtain none of this emotion. Yes the speaker enumerates “flying”, in the skies with God, to be freed of human sin and within Jesus’s heart. I can hear the pain and discomfort of the speaker admitting that he has not been the best ‘Christian’ (as stated in line’s 12-15, “My tender age in sorrow did begin; and still with sicknesses and shame Thou didst so punish sin, that I became Most thin.”) or even a christian; but that he hopes God will service him in the way that he is now servicing God; with forgiveness. I understand the redemption arc of this poem, which is also comically written in the form of angel wings, I get there is a transition here of guilt to pride over his religion (shall I say, a flip of the WING?!) But for the speaker being someone who is religious, especially monotheistic; I would believe that he would learn self-forgiveness. When I hear about devotion to the Holy ghost, I suspect a total blind forgiveness of one’s past self–and more so an introduction into the blissfully painful love this speaker has for God. What I’m looking for here is just a genuine conversation between the speaker and God; however, in Easter Wings, I feel as if he is ‘begging’ for forgiveness rather than, practicing it. In The Alter, he shows God his love, he recites it perfectly and brings forth his pain to be ignited by the eternal light. I wanted to feel the love, not the regret.